This invention relates to a stethoscopic apparatus, and more particularly to a type of radio/wire stethoscopic apparatus designed for multiple auscultation and historical recording of a patient.
A stethoscope is an indispensable medical instrument for diagnosing the illness of patients by doctors. However, problems suffered by the conventional stethoscopes are as follows:
(1) The structure of conventional stethoscopes usually comprises a chest piece provided at one end of a rubber tube, and a pair of eartips arranged at another end of the rubber tube through a pair of flexible binaurals. By positioning the chest piece on the patient's body, diagnosis is made from the sound detected by the chest piece through either a diaphragm or a bell thereof. The sound generated from the patient's body is usually very weak and also varies. Correct diagnosis cannot be made easily because transformation of the detected sound is often caused by the binaurals of the conventional stethoscopes.
(2) In order to allow the user to listen to the patient's body without interference by external noise, the binaurals of the conventional stethoscope must be resilient, which is uncomfortable for the user.
(3) Conventional stethoscopes are usually designed for a single user. If consultation is required for the same patient or bed-side teaching has to be conducted as in academically affiliated hospitals, each observer needs to perform the auscultation one after another on the same patient. At the same time, different types of stethoscopes used at different times may result in different detected sounds. Therefore, not only is it inconvenient for the patient, particularly a female one, but also it is difficult for each observer to observe the same sound for correct diagnosis.
(4) As conventional stethoscopes are designed to perform auscultation only on the spot, it is difficult to diagnose from a very weak and transient sound from the suspected body portion of a patient, and, moreover, there is no recording function provided for conventional stethoscopes to record the required sound for the patient's history for correct diagnosis as well as for teaching purposes.